This Man Wants You Dead

By
Kenneth R. Timmerman

A Reader's Exclusive

July 1998 issue - released June 20, 1998

The notice appeared in an Arabic newspaper
in London last February. "The ruling to kill Americans and
their allies--civilians and military is a duty for every
Muslim. We -- with God's help -- call on every Muslim to
kill the Americans." Islamic extremists make outrageous
statements every day in the Arabic-language press, most of
which go unnoticed. But this one, a fatwa (religious order),
alarmed government officials around the world. Within days
U.S. embassies in the Middle East and Pakistan were
threatened with attack. Government buildings in Washington,
D.C., went on a rare "high security alert." Vehicles
entering the Pentagon were searched.

Financier of Terror

U.S. officials took the death threat
seriously, sources tell Reader's Digest, because of the
reputation of the main signatory: Osama Bin Ladin. This
former Saudi businessman was virtually unknown to Western
intelligence agencies until just a few years ago, but today
the U.S. State Department considers him a significant
sponsor of world terrorism. Evidence points to his
connection to persons suspected of numerous acts of
violence, including:

• The 1993 bombing of New York City's World
Trade Center.

• Attacks on American servicemen in Somalia,
which prompted the withdrawal of our peacekeeping troops.

• The bombings of a Saudi National Guard
training center in Riyadh in 1995 and of Khobar Towers, an
apartment complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996. Two
dozen Americans died in these attacks.

Bin Ladin is a pariah in many Islamic
countries, but he operates with impunity from a base in
Afghanistan. Using huge financial resources, he supports
international terrorist networks, encouraging others to act
while never pulling a trigger or detonating a bomb himself.
Tall and thin, with a full beard, Osama Bin Ladin wears
long, flowing Arab robes fringed with gold, and wraps his
head in a traditional red-and-white checkered headdress.
Those who have met him say he is soft-spoken and extremely
courteous. Despite his apparent humility, he has become an
almost mythic figure in the Islamic world because he has
dared to stand up to two superpowers.

Bin Ladin, now about 43 years old, is one of
some 65 children of a Saudi construction magnate. When
family patriarch Mohammad Bin Ladin died in the late 1960s,
his children inherited a financial empire that today is
worth an estimated $10 billion. The Saudi Bin Ladin Group is
now run by Osama's family, which has publicly said it does
not condone his reported activities.

In November 1996 Palestinian journalist
Abdelbari Atwan visited Bin Ladin in the mountains of
Afghanistan, expecting to find the lavish camp of a man of
wealth. Instead, he spent two nights sleeping next to Bin
Ladin in a cave. "It was freezing," Atwan says. "I reached
under my camp bed hoping to find an extra blanket. Instead,
it was crammed with Kalashnikov rifles and mortar bombs."
What drove Bin Ladin to take up arms? Those who know him
agree: a burning faith that sees the world in simplistic
terms as a struggle between righteous Islam and a doomed
West. It is a worldview taught to many young Saudis. But the
teachings struck a particular chord in Bin Ladin,
reverberating with his seeming passion for danger. The
"Afghan Arabs" Enraged when the Soviet Union invaded Muslim
Afghanistan in December 1979, Bin Ladin went there to aid
the mojahedin freedom fighters, providing food and weapons,
much of it with family money. A Saudi official says Bin
Ladin helped to recruit thousands of Arabs who volunteered
for the jihad (holy war) against the Soviets. Early in the
war the mojahedin were getting slaughtered by Soviet
helicopter gunships as they tried to bring in supplies on
mules across the mountain passes of northern Afghanistan.
Bin Ladin volunteered the services of the family
construction firm to blast new roads through the mountains.
"He brought huge bulldozers," says London-based Khaled
Fuawaz, a former Bin Ladin associate. According to Fuawaz,
when Bin Ladin could not find drivers willing to face the
Soviet gunships, he drove the bulldozers himself. One time
he was attacked by Soviet helicopters and wounded. Bin Ladin
poured millions of dollars of his family's cash into the
war, with the blessing of the Saudi government. He also
personally led a contingent of Arab troops, winning a key
victory against the Soviets in 1986. By the time the Soviet
Union had pulled out of Afghanistan in February 1989, Bin
Ladin was leading a fighting force known as "Afghan Arabs,"
which numbered nearly 20,000. "Bin Ladin was like a head of
state," says a Saudi dissident. "The Afghan Arabs had a
romantic image of him."

Hero to Outlaw

Bin ladin viewed any Western presence in the
Middle East as a threat to Islam. After Iraq's August 1990
invasion of Kuwait, Reader's Digest has learned, Bin Ladin
met with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan to offer his
services to the Desert Storm operation&emdash;but only
if the United States were not involved. "Bin Ladin spread
out maps in front of Prince Sultan," a Saudi official says.
"He had all kinds of plans for how to defeat the Iraqis
without American help. Prince Sultan asked what he planned
to do about the Iraqi tanks, aircraft and chemical and
biological weapons. Bin Ladin said, 'We will defeat them
with our faith.' " The Saudi government declined his offer,
and Bin Ladin later moved to Sudan&emdash;but not before
he cashed out of the family business, receiving an estimated
$260 million. It is this fortune that he uses today to prime
the terrorist pump.

In 1992 Bin Ladin's attention appears to
have been directed against Egypt. That year, Reader's Digest
has been told, an extremist group with financial ties to Bin
Ladin sent a fax to Egypt threatening the government of
President Hosni Mubarak, America's closest Arab ally.

"Bin Ladin focused on Egypt," says a former
spokesman for President Mubarak, Mohammad Abdul Moneim,
"because he knew that if Egypt fell to the Islamists, the
whole Arab world would fall." Bin Ladin, says the U.S. State
Department, was the key financier behind a camp providing
terrorist training to the Egyptian group. Its members, whose
spiritual leader was the blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar
Abdel Rahman, opposed not only Mubarak but also
Westerners&emdash;particularly Americans.

Members of the group slaughtered 58 foreign
tourists visiting a temple at Luxor in November 1997. A U.S.
diplomat in Cairo told Reader's Digest that the planner of
the attack "would have loved to get Americans" but failed.
Most of those killed were Swiss. Bin Ladin hasn't limited
his efforts to the Middle East. There is evidence linking
him to Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing, and to other terrorists who planned attacks
on American soil. Sources tell Reader's Digest that the
federal government is investigating Bin Ladin's involvement.

Making Connections

Edwin Angeles, a leader of a radical Islamic
group in the Philippines who became a government informant,
says that Yousef and Bin Ladin were linked at least as long
ago as 1989. In that year, Yousef went to the Philippines
and introduced himself as an emissary of Osama Bin Ladin,
sent to support that country's radical Islamic movement. One
of Yousef's main contacts in Manila, according to Angeles,
was Saudi businessman Mohammad Jamal Khalifah, Bin Ladin's
brother-in-law. After participating in the Trade Center
bombing, Yousef returned to the Philippines, where he
plotted to plant bombs aboard U.S. passenger airliners in
1995.

In New York City, Sheik Rahman and others
plotted attacks on major bridges and tunnels. During
Rahman's 1995 trial, prosecutors included Bin Ladin on a
list of nonindicted persons who "may be alleged as
co-conspirators," though Bin Ladin has not been charged.

While living in Sudan, Bin Ladin established
a construction company employing many of his former Afghan
fighters. In the spring of 1996, according to Pakistani
government officials, one of Bin Ladin's bodyguards
attempted to assassinate him. After the attempt failed, Bin
Ladin flew to Afghanistan on board his unmarked, private
C-130 military transport plane. There, according to
Pakistani officials, Bin Ladin established a base southwest
of Jalalabad, under the protection of the Afghan government.
A few weeks after the attempt on Bin Ladin's life, a
powerful explosion ripped through the Khobar Towers complex
near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen. Bin
Ladin, who called this "a laudable kind of terrorism,"
publicly denied participating. But a knowledgeable Saudi
dissident in London has told Reader's Digest that the six
men whom the Saudi government arrested for the bombing all
trained in Afghanistan. "If they trained there," declared
the dissident, "they have a connection to Bin Ladin." In
August 1996, and later in November, Bin Ladin announced that
he and his followers would stage terrorist attacks against
U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia to force an American withdrawal.
The Digest has learned that after Bin Ladin called for this
jihad, as many as eight attacks against U.S. military
targets in the Middle East were attempted. These were foiled
by an intense Saudi intelligence effort, which included
enticing a top financial aide to Bin Ladin to defect.

Today, the State Department says, terrorist
organizations that have received support from Bin Ladin
continue to operate around the world. In March 1998 Brussels
police arrested seven men and confiscated a cache of
explosives. The men are believed to be part of the Armed
Islamic Group (GIA), which is responsible for the slaughter
of thousands in Algeria over the last six years. One
knowledgeable source says GIA has received financial support
from Bin Ladin. In May, eight suspected GIA members were
arrested in London.

Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, a religious
scholar in London with ties to Bin Ladin, told The Digest
that Bin Ladin is funding armed Muslim groups in Albania,
Chechnya, Bosnia, Nigeria and Algeria. "We are sending
British and American Muslims to train in camps run by Bin
Ladin," Bakri says. "This is an international
army&emdash;Mohammed's army&emdash;to combat
occupying governments."

The Coming Crusade The groups obeying Bin
Ladin are hard to track down and difficult to penetrate.
"These small groups, which may be just five or ten persons,
can never be eradicated," says Saad al-Faghi, a Saudi
dissident living in London. "They believe they belong to the
jihad, not by command but by faith. They are very
dangerous." Today Bin Ladin lives in Afghanistan with three
wives and 42 other Arab families in a 30-house complex.
Reader's Digest has been told that Bin Ladin has bought
heavy weapons on the black market and is training new
fighters at his camp in the north. He is also seeking to
widen his alliances. The February 1998 London fatwa against
Americans was issued under the banner of the International
Islamic Front and signed by radical Islamic leaders in
Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Bin Ladin's coldblooded
invitation to murder is taken seriously by American
diplomats. "If they want to attack us, they can," says a
U.S. diplomat in Pakistan. "We're all soft targets." But
U.S. officials are not the only ones at risk. In November
1997, for example, four American oil-company workers were
gunned down in Pakistan. The murders were just two days
after the conviction in a Fairfax, Va., court of Pakistani
Mir Aimal Kasi, who went on a 1993 shooting spree outside
CIA headquarters, killing two CIA employees. For more than a
decade, Bin Ladin has reached across the world, funding
terrorism. As his money flows, so does innocent blood.

"Having borne arms against the Russians in
Afghanistan," Bin Ladin has declared, "we think our battle
with the Americans will be easy by comparison. We are now
more determined to carry on until we see the face of God."
"Bin Ladin has plenty of manpower and explosives," declares
Saad al-Faghi. And the world has learned that when a
pronouncement is uttered in the name of Osama Bin Ladin, the
threat is anything but idle.